Items

• Flaunting it! : a decade of gay journalism from The Body Politic : an anthology
  ‘The Body Politic’ (TBP) was a collectively run gay liberation journal founded in Toronto in 1971. Initially sold locally, it developed national distribution, and this anthology collects writing and illustrations from thirty-six contributors covering the publication’s first decade. Even at the time of publication, the anthology was considered a historical record of a key decade in gay liberation, which is expressed across sections including those entitled ‘Risks’, ‘Living Our Lives’, ‘Cruising and Censorship’, and ‘Into the Eighties’. The book is published by Pink Triangle Press (which still exists), the publishing organisation behind ‘TBP’, with financial support from New Star Books. This copy is inscribed to Gay’s the Word from six members of the collective, who note that “the seizure of your stock is a tribute to your success”.
• Witches heal : lesbian herbal self-sufficiency
  Billie Potts (1940-2013) was one third of Elf and Dragons, self-described “lesbian witches”, who were a Woodstock-based women’s land collective, a publisher, distributor of herbs and part of a wider feminist spirituality movement. Women’s rural collectives were common in the USA at this time. Potts’s book is a guide to herbalism and an “access tool”, promoting self-sufficiency and encouraging lesbian women to reclaim their role as healers. The book proved controversial as its publication coincided with an acrimonious split within Elf and Dragons. Susun R. Weed accused Potts of using her work uncredited and asked feminist bookshops not to stock the book. The ‘Operation Tiger’ raids were not, therefore, the first attempts to restrict this book.